Digital Is Better Than Film??

 Photography  No Responses »
Jul 152009
 

Every so often I encounter a discussion on whether film is better than digital or digital is better than film, which usually degenerates into someone mentioning large format film and someone else mentioning the convenience of digital (or even the convenience of film). It’s all balderdash (and I wrote this post just to use that word … not!). More or less.

When making images (which is what photography is all about after all) it does not matter whether you use film or digital, because using either you can just occasionally produce jaw droppingly good images. Indeed for many such images, the quality of the source does not matter too much as you will be concentrating on the subject rather than the relatively minor “issues” with the image quality such as film grain, ISO noise, chromatic aberration, etc.

What does matter is using whatever makes you comfortable. I cannot shoot film because the thought of actually paying money per shot makes me freeze up. Exposure bracketing ? Forget it. Others cannot shoot digital because computers fill them with horror (and I can certainly understand that!!).

For me, digital is better. For those others film is better.

What counts is the final production – the image, and not the mechanics of how it came about.

iPhone: What’s Missing (2): Where’s The Keyboard ?

 Computing, iPhone  No Responses »
Jul 122009
 

I’m very fussy about keyboards; perhaps ridiculously so. But I cannot understand the criticism of the virtual keyboard that comes with the iPhone. It takes some getting used to, and the auto correct feature whilst very useful can also be very irritating. Enough so that Apple should probably have a keyboard button marked “turn off auto correct for a while”. But it is perfectly adequate for what it is  – something to do a little text entry from time to time.

So why am I complaining about the lack of a decent keyboard ? Because quite simply if I’m doing any writing (and I don’t at present) on the iPhone, I would like to be able to type at full speed – which for me requires a decent clicky keyboard so I can get up to a reasonable speed (apparently about 120wpm!).

Adding bluetooth drivers to the iPhone should be pretty trivial for Apple after all there are already OSX bluetooth keyboard drivers available, and the iPhone operating system is OSX. So why does Apple not include one ? Sure there’s an excuse for the first release not to include one – Apple wanted to make sure that the phone was rock solid in a totally new market to them. But now?

Surely it cannot be because they feel that releasing such a driver would be an admission that the virtual keyboard is no good. After all, I’m not exactly an enemy of the virtual keyboard, but I want a real keyboard interface for those occasions when one would be useful.

iPhone: What Is Missing (1)

 Computing, iPhone  No Responses »
Jul 122009
 

The iPhone is hardly perfect, although it is quite good for a smartphone. However now we are loading up our iPhones with dozens of added applications, the old swipe-able screen interface needs a bit of care.

The first improvement would be the ability to tag particular screens with names. This would be merely an aid to organisation, but in practice would be very handy. There is plenty of space in the status bar for the “name” of a screen, or Apple could do something funkier involving putting the name onto the background.

Secondly it would be handy to have icons that could “warp” to a particular screen – presumably by name. This would work as a simplistic form of ‘folders’ for the applications.

Finally it would be useful to be able to make certain application icons “sticky” so that they remain available no matter what screen is currently active.

Theft Insurance – Who Should Pay For It ?

 General  No Responses »
Jul 122009
 

Just a random thought that just occurred to me … who should pay for insurance on the theft of things … cars, the contents of homes, etc. ? We all know that is normally the victims of theft who pay for it, but why should we ?

Why shouldn’t those who are convicted of theft pay for the cost of insurance ? Attach their earnings after they leave prison until they have paid back enough to cover the cost of insurance in proportion to the amount they have stolen.

The Apple iPhone App Store – A Year On

 Computing  No Responses »
Jul 112009
 

Apparently the Apple iPhone app store has been open for a year now. It has not been quite a year since I have been using it, but nearly so. It is not really anything new in itself as most smart phones allowed you to download new applications, but it does present the available applications in a very usable way.

The ease of use (which is something Apple are very good at) is sufficiently good that other smartphone vendors are effectively copying the concept. But that is something that is well known, so lets have a look at some of the warts.

The most obvious problem is that there are so many applications available that it is hard to find anything. Browsing for anything and you will find yourself in an endless list of possibilities. Searching is a little unsophisticated and has one very irritating feature – after searching for something, getting a list of applications, you will obviously touch an application to get a closer look at one of the applications. The search then changes what you searched for to the application name! This makes it very difficult to compare applications.

Some observers have criticised the number of applications by saying that they only select a small number – perhaps 4 or 5 that they use on a daily basis. They imply that all those “excess” applications are a waste of space because they do not use them. However they all overlook one thing – everybody’s list of 5 “daily” applications is likely to be different!

Besides which there are applications you load “just in case”. For instance I have “Vicinity” not because I need to know where the coffee shops are where I live or where I work. But because I am sometimes away from home and will need that information. Similarly I have an ssh-capable terminal client installed, because it may be useful in an emergency.

Apart from improving the search function, one other thing that would improve the app store is some method for allowing reviews of applications to be viewed. The easiest way to pick the best application out of a category of similar applications is to resort to what somebody else has discovered. Add a tab for reviews, and allow organisations to publish their reviews to the app store.

But more serious is Apple’s draconian policies on what applications get into the store. I am not talking about “adult content” here (although those who wish such, should be allowed it) but rather more ordinary applications. Applications seem to get rejected for seemingly arbitrary reasons even though very similar ones get allowed through.

That gets more than a little irritating when Apple releases an update to the operating system that breaks certain applications, and then refuses to allow an update to that application to be released. For an example, see here.

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